Early retaliation
Amid all the usual oohs and aahs at the new Apple shiny thing yesterday, somewhat subsumed was the news that iAd - Apple's own mobile advertising network, spawned from the acquisition of Quattro - will launch on 1 July. The significance wasn't lost on Apple, however, which released a separate press release at the same time as the iPhone 4 one.
Apple was keen to stress just how many advertisers had already jumped on-board, committing $60 million to the platform for 2010, which Apple says is half the total amount forecast to be spent on mobile advertising in the US for the second half of this year. It must be said, however, that many of the named brands already have ties to Apple, such as AT&T, Best Buy and Disney.
"iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web, and offers users a new way to explore ads without being hijacked out of their favorite apps," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "iAds will reach millions of iPhone and iPod touch users-a highly desirable demographic for advertisers-and provide developers a new way to earn money so they can continue developing free and low cost applications." Note no iPad, yet.
As we've stressed for a while, mobile advertising stands to be a huge and critical market as the mobile Internet era develops. Not only will it be one of the primary sources of revenue generated, it will also be the main driver behind the development of apps at a time when end-users expect to pay little or nothing for them. This is why Adobe has got its knickers in such a twist over Apple's decision to ban apps developed on platforms it hasn't approved of.
So in anticipation of the launch of iAd, Adobe has made a couple of announcements of its own. Yesterday independent mobile advertising network Greystripe announced it is collaborating with Adobe to provide ads for the iPhone and iPad (among other platforms), authored on Adobe Flash. It even said the platform is comparable to iAd, but priced at a fraction of the cost.
"Our collaboration with Adobe underscores our commitment to bringing engaging, rich media, cross platform ad solutions to our advertisers," said Michael Chang, CEO of Greystripe. "We're thrilled to announce this proven alternative to iAds and offer digital agencies and brand advertisers the broadest possible reach across platforms and devices worldwide."
Greystripe will deliver Flash-authored ads as HTML5 to those devices that don't support Flash - i.e. Apple ones. Other devices will just get them as they come. Additionally, today Adobe issued a press release announcing what great ROI watch-maker Timex has derived from using its Omniture Online Marketing Suite on its website.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to ensure its mobile plans aren't forgotten about amid all this iOS and Android buzz. One Windows Phone blog post talks about improvements to the Windows Phone Marketplace, while another stresses how good Windows Phone 7 will be for enterprise use.
The race is definitely on to secure as big a piece of mobile advertising action as possible. While Apple, once more, has a head-start, let's not forget that Google's acquisition of AdMob has now completed. This is set to be one of the major battlegrounds for the technology industry over the next few years.
